Bungy Run by Bernard Beckett is a lively and humorous story that follows Sidney as he takes part in a closely contested interschool challenge. While his teammates bring strengths such as balance, stamina, and determination, Sidney considers positivity his superpower. When he unexpectedly has to compete in the bungy run, his confidence is tested by mistakes, embarrassment, and the pressure of helping his team. Through dialogue, action, and a surprising finish, the story explores what it means to contribute when a task feels difficult.

By combining sporting excitement with an exploration of encouragement and self-belief, the text supports students to recognise different strengths and consider how teammates can help one another persevere. It invites discussion about belonging, managing setbacks, and the value of a positive contribution, making it a relatable text for integrated literacy, health, and physical education learning.

This pack contains wide range of response activities including:

• A guided reading plan exploring key literacy elements including inference and deduction, language use, making connection and text organisation, along with key questioning to promote emotional intelligence, metacognition and compassionate inquiry. 
• An independent learning contract complete with explainer videos for activity clarity
  
• A wide range of response activities to support developing and embedding key literacy skills including sentence and word work, spelling, and cloze activities. 

Curriculum Phase: Phase 2

Year Level: Year 4

English: reading for meaning, sequencing events, making inferences about characters’ feelings and motivations, exploring character and author perspectives, identifying themes, examining dialogue and humour, and supporting responses with evidence from the text

Health and Physical Education: teamwork, participation, encouragement, recognising personal strengths, managing emotions, responding to challenges, and fair play

Social and Emotional Learning: empathy, belonging, confidence, perseverance, supportive relationships, and valuing different contributions

Text type: Fiction, short story, realistic fiction, humorous narrative

Key words include: belonging, bungy run, challenge, competition, confidence, determination, encouragement, fair play, humour, interschool sports, mistakes, perseverance, personal strengths, positivity, resilience, self-belief, sportsmanship, teamwork